The present invention relates to a system and related method for creating art work using tile pieces and deals more particularly with an automated tiling system whereby tilings are arranged in an ordered collection of plates in accordance with numeric data representing a pattern to be followed by the tile pieces such that the ordered collection of plates once bonded to a substrate surface depict the pattern initially prescribed by the input data.
Hitherto, the creation of tile plates, that is, the pre-made assembly of the tile pieces and the material backing on which they are attached, were manufactured for the most part by hand. This involved the time consuming process of hiring people to pick and place individual tile pieces in a given arrangement on the plate material. The manual arrangement of tilings on a backing material has without doubt many problems associated with it, and among these problems is that the complexity of the design to be carried out is limited by the skill of the worker. Attempts have been made to simplify the creation of designs. One such attempt is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,715,289 wherein fabrication of repetitive or nonrepetitive designs is accomplished using plates having a repeating pattern baked in them. The design is created by varying the orientation of the individual plates relative to one another. A mosaic is thus created by the juxtaposition of each plate with the other. However, the tile pieces used are all of the same shape and size so that there is no aesthetic enhancement through shape and size variances. Also, there is no point-by-point color variation capability with this system, thus making it virtually impossible to portray different designs outside of those which are provided for by the system.
With the advancement of new scanning technology, the ability to take an image and transpose it into digital form for use in a computer is readily available. The availability of such scanning technology presents countless possibilities for decorating interiors and exteriors of an environment. In addition, surfaces on commonly found items, such as plazas, walkways, pool areas, coffee tables, dining tables, counter tops, mantle pieces and wall hangings, could all be decorated in tile with exquisite beauty using the data representing the design which is to be represented by the tile pieces. In digital form, a desired design could be projected electronically in a simulation of an environment in which it is to be used. That is, data representing a graphic in digitized form quite easily lends itself to being displayed on a screen, or printed by a multicolored laser jet printer on paper in the case where a hard copy is desired. However, while it is very possible to create and maintain such graphic representations of a given design electronically in a computer, implementing this data to drive numerically controlled machinery to create a simulated mosaic involves correlating the rules of tiling mathematics with the numeric control logic of the implementing machines.
Additionally, the capability of computers taken from a stand point of storing and executing complex equations and matrices, such as, equations involving the laws of tessellism or pointillism which govern tiling pattern design, is made virtually automatic through the use of such technology. The placement of the basic geometric shapes often used in creating a mosaic, such as squares, hexagons or triangles, while hitherto primarily arranged in a monohedral relationship, can be integrated with one another by using appropriate software. Examples of such are prototiles in which equilateral triangles, squares and regular hexagons can be arranged in a myriad of different formations by execution of the appropriate algorithm in the computer. The laying out of individual tiles to physically determine whether or not they fit within a given confine, as is presently done by hand, can further be simplified by an overall algorithm for automatically creating a tiling by computer.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a system wherein a computer is employed mathematically to arrange tile pieces on plates in accordance with data representing a pattern to be depicted by the tile pieces and wherein data is used by the system for controlling a handling device which places individual tile pieces onto a plate material at predetermined locations to create the desired tile arrangement.
A further object of the invention is to provide a system of the aforementioned type wherein a design which is to cover a contiguous environment is capable of being projected in a portrayal of that environment prior to the actual assembling of tiles pieces onto plates.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a system of the aforementioned type whereby a simulated mosaic can be bonded to a surface using an ordered arrangement of plates which are coded to correspond to a designated area of the surface to be covered by the plates.